Agriculture, trade, other services, manufacturing and professional, scientific and technical services dominated economic activities in the third quarter of 2017, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said.

The NBS in its labour force statistics volume 2: employment by sector report, which was released yesterday, stated that the sectors attracted 84.40 per cent of the total workers in Nigeria, amounting to 64.67 million workers.

Of the 85.08 million labour force of Q3 2017, the report showed that 77.55 million employees were engaged in some economic activities for at least an hour a week, while 7.53 million did nothing.

The report explained until the third quarter of 2017, 48.19 per cent of all workers in Nigeria were engaged in agriculture, in which 29.59 per cent worked full-time or 40 hours per week, 12.13 per cent worked 20-39 hours per week while 6.46 per cent worked less than 20 hours per week.

Trade, other services, manufacturing and professional, scientific and technical services accounted for 13.97 per cent or 10.85 million, 7.89 per cent (6.12 million), 6.89 per cent (5.41 million) and 6.37per cent (4.94 million) of the total working population respectively.

The NBS said out of 8.46 million persons that worked within one to 19 hours a week, 1.83 million or 21.67 per cent worked for wages, while 5.84 million or 69.03 per cent were self-employed in agriculture.

Also, 4.18 million or 49.44 per cent worked in non-agriculture related activities, while 1.65 million or 19.58 per cent were paid apprentices and 703,240 or 8.31 per cent were unpaid house-workers, among others.

The report also stated that education, transportation and storage, health and social services, accommodation and food services, arts entertainment creation and administrative and support services presented higher shares of employment than the corresponding shares of nominal GDP in 2017 Q3.

This indicated that these activities were more labour intensive than other sectors.